


Take My Hand

by soulselfs



Category: DC - Fandom
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Marriage Proposal, like 2.5k of pure fluff <3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-08
Updated: 2020-05-08
Packaged: 2021-03-03 04:27:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24078976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soulselfs/pseuds/soulselfs
Summary: alternate ending in which damian asks raven to “lead the league” with him in a better time and a slightly better world. (fluff to heal your damaged hearts for now)
Relationships: DamiRae - Relationship, Raven/Damian Wayne
Comments: 2
Kudos: 148





	Take My Hand

He wonders if it makes sense for someone’s eyelashes to fan out into their cheeks like the thinner petals of chrysanthemums, like the shawl of night relieved of the brightness of stars. They curve in a perfect almond shape, dipping into a pointed nose and into the hill of dusted pink lips which are molded into a scrunched position in sleep.

Damian hasn’t always been like this.

He used to see people’s faces as just faces and nothing more, expressions and features molded together of people who’s bronze and brains he focused on more than anything else. But with this person, with this particular person, it’s like his eyes are filtered to catch more details. He notices the way sunlight bends across her face and how he can catch the most subtle dip in her cheeks, and how the sound of her laughter rings in his chest like an echo.

She’s laying here, resting in the fields of grass and Damian feels like his world is being turned upside down. This should be dangerous because everything wired within him is leading him to believe that one’s heart speeding up doesn’t mean anything good. That he should back away, think about something else, figure out the plans for today, concern himself with his future with the league. And he should find himself weak for not being able to look away, but he doesn’t.

It’s the kind of addicting feeling that you cannot reason with. He’ll find himself abandoning his duties to stare at a random part of the wall realizing how warm the color white looks and how safe the color violet seems, completely ignoring the image of a pair of robes and eyes that are blaring in his eyes.

Love.

It’s a word that is thrown around a lot, Damian concludes in his head. He understands many forms of it, especially these days, like the kind that exists between a parent and a child and that of comrades and friends. And he may be new to a thousand different things, and will still be figuring out a hundred different feelings, but this feels like love. It feels like love because he thinks of things to do for her that’ll make her happy and he stares at her back for too long when she leaves for some mission. But it’s how he’s found his hand so frequently on his chest, just above where his heart hammers, that makes him understand what kind of love it is. It’s an instinct at this point, accompanied almost always by a flustered blush.

He knows what this is, knows what it has been the past decade, and he cannot stand another day of performing this foolish dance and depriving himself of the possibility.

Raven shifts slightly, adjusting the robe she has removed and used as a light blanket before her eyelids slowly lift. There are lavender tulips blooming beautifully behind her, and even they seem in awe over the color they share with her eyes, the breeze weaving through them just in time.

She blinks and glances over at Damian.

He’s quite beautiful, isn’t he, is the first thought that stumbles into her bleary mind from her few minutes worth of napping. He has skin like honey that captures the tones of the atmosphere—there are no sharp reflections or shadows, just a soft settling of sunlight onto his face. His eyes are the color of juniper spinners, and she can feel her skin heat underneath his gentle gaze.

In moments like these, she cannot help but wonder about the side of him she’s seeing, the side that nobody else gets to see. He instinctively reaches out and brushes a strand of midnight hair that has slightly curled along the slope of her cheeks, and the gesture isn’t even one that makes her flinch. In these quiet, softer moments, one of them is always doing something that neither of them talks about later.

“If only your father was a good man,” Damian begins his voice low in a bare whisper, the sounds of his strings of word melt beautifully with the chirp of faraway birds and the gentle rustle of grass.

Raven stays infatuated with the sound of his voice for a few seconds before they process in her brain. He’s staring at her in such a way that has already surely made her pinker than the color of the skies, that is just now changing into sunset colors. It’s so impossibly heavy, like every word that would make her even redder is settling heavy atop the greens.

“What are you talking about, Damian?” She whispers back just as gently, hoping he doesn’t notice how she leans into his caressing thumb.

There’s a ghost of a smile on his face that he doesn’t dare to change, and adjusts himself until he’s leaning on a single elbow, fingers fumbling with the blades of grass that grow touching her cheeks. They’re very red and he finds it impossibly adorable.

He doesn’t even think when he says the next sentence, but it’s the most right thing he’s ever said in the entirety of his life.

“It would’ve been so much easier to ask for your hand that way,” He says quietly, looking away.

Her heart sinks, down, down, down into her belly.

It hits Raven like a crashing wave, not necessarily sharp nor soft, just a flood of icy water that is overwhelming and flooding in every sense. Her heart thrums once loudly, and it drums her whole body like the aftershock of an earthquake.

What? Her words are repeated more desperately in her head, and she can’t help but think she misread the situation, misheard what he said. What are you talking about, Damian?  
Damian lays back down, his head tilting to turn the other way, finding the downwards slope of the hill easier to stare at than the pure shock on Raven’s face. It was expected, of course, it was expected, but it was also expected that this part would be hard to swallow.

Raven just stares at him, stares at the sharpness of his jawline and the way it clenches in stress, the way he swallows after a few minutes past and those minutes are entirely just Raven. Just Raven staring, taking in what she’s heard, trying to process what he meant.

He wants to ask for my hand?  
Her entire body feels flushed and hot like she’s being observed under the merciless eye of a thousand blazing suns. Her heart is sinking and lifting, like a heavy pail of water in a well. She can feel herself almost getting dizzy with how hard it’s beating, how much she cannot help but remember every moment that didn’t make sense to her.

She’d been so terrified, so unbelievably terrified that he didn’t feel the same. She’d be confident in his every touch, in his every special word or stare, but there would’ve been a creeping voice in the back of her head begging her to see clearly. To see that the way he spent longer with her on the training grounds or how he always jumped to her defense or found any excuse to touch her was just a figment of her imagination. She’d seen how Bruce had stared at his son for longer when he did things like that, how even her mother would be smirking to herself if she caught them, which was rare all things considered but still impactful. She’d always wondered if those were in her head, too.

But one day, he’d officially be another’s, and it would no longer be right to be hopeful at such interactions.

“Damian,” She whispers, and he doesn’t stir. Raven wonders if the tint of red on just the tips of his ears are truly there, or if it’s just the way a rosy tulip petal is reflecting the color. “Damian.”

“If you don’t want anything to change,” He says, and his voice sounds far too small and too vulnerable and hesitant to be Damian Wayne, but at the same time it’s somehow confident. Like he knows there’s no changing what he’s feeling. “Just stay like this.”

“Damian,” Raven reaches and caresses the soft of his jawline, her fingers trailing to the base of his neck and tangle in the small hairs there.

Is this too much? She wonders for only a moment before her other hand reaches to his chin, turning him to face her. His eyes are closed until they aren’t, and Raven wonders if it was better with them closed, because all the air is knocked out of her seeing the amount of emotion swirling into green eyes unused to this.

He’s so endearing.

“Can you say that again?” She whispers, but he’s looking away again by the time he parts his lips to repeat himself. Her hand reachers to press softly against his lips, his eyes widening slightly. “Can you say that again looking at me this time?”

Damian Wayne is looking at her like she’s just shown him every possible wonder of the world from lonely skies above, and she cannot understand it. She cannot comprehend it, like how she cannot comprehend how much her fingers are shaking against his lips.

He slowly, painfully slowly, encompasses a much larger hand above her own delicate one. It’s slightly callous from the handle of the swords he’s always handling, but she always finds herself admiring them more than anything. He closes his eyes, eyelashes branched on bronze skin and impossibly gentle presses his lips forward into the pads of her fingers.

She can hear herself gasp, but she cannot help but be held in trance by his gesture—all thoughts and feelings vanished into the thick of air with the exception of Damian’s gentle face and even most gentle kiss. He shifts his grip on her hand, bringing the back of her fingers closer to his lips, pressing another kiss there. He moves to her knuckles, and to the space between them, and presses a kiss there.

Raven’s heart is slipping.

He reaches the back of his hand and presses it against her lips, and it’s somehow deeper, especially with how his brows furrow like he’s thinking of something very serious, very important, very necessary.

She’s necessary to him.

He spends a long while like that until his lips just barely leave the place where he’d kissed, just enough so she can feel his breath on her skin, which is suddenly so entirely sensitive to every little sensation and move down to her knuckles once more. His eyes drift upwards, locking with hers and everything around her feels like it’s locked into place, locked into ice.

“I don’t think I’m a man of many words,” He says, and he looks almost conflicted like he wishes he knew how to put together how he’s feeling instead of needing a longer time to put thoughts into sounds. “But I know that nobody is like you.”

Something in the corner of her eyes is stinging at those words. She’d never had imagined somebody would have said things like that about her, especially when she’s so consumed with poor thoughts about herself sometimes.

“What I meant to say, Raven,” He whispers, and lord—did her name always sound like that, or has she been unable to hear it before now? “May I have your hand?”

There are a hundred ways to handle this, all that end in acceptance but some that are more thought out and perhaps more poetic, but nothing feels more pronounced than not letting him do anything else to make her heart slip further into her belly. Nothing feels more right than pressing his lips against her own.

And so that’s what she does.

She surges, hands on either side of his head, barely giving him a moment to respond, completely overwhelmed and overtaken by this boy, by this man, who’s risking everything he’s ever known or everything that makes sense to take a tremendous risk and be vulnerable.

His lips feel like how the petals of the tulips would feel, smoothened by the gentle wind and warmed by the sunshine, and he can feel himself spiraling and drowning until nothing feels better than losing all consciousness in her. He reaches for her shoulders, for her back, not being able to help but gasp from the proximity of her outline and intimacy atop him. He never thought it’d feel like this to be close to somebody.

“You are...” He whispers when they part for a moment, not understanding what he’s saying but the overwhelm is coming out as words crawling up his throat. “You are far too much.”

It’s so innocent.

He’s intense and extreme and emotive and he’s pouring it all out on once and Raven figures this is perhaps just as the Wayne’s are. She can feel his heartbeat where her thumb is resting in the pulse underneath his jaw and can feel it stammering like uneven thunder. She can feel herself smiling, and then suddenly the kiss is broken from how hard she’s smiling alone—something she’s not used to.

But he barely lets her, relishing in the feeling of her smile against his lips, entirely too enamored with the taste of her laughter until a ghost of a smile blossoms and grows and grows on his mouth until a small, huff of stifled laughter leaves his lips.

“I always thought you’d be so blunt if you were to propose to a person,” She says fondly, holding his wrist with both hands, and the love in his eyes is overflowing, overspilling at every word she speaks.

Damian settles one hand on the small of her back, the other reaching to tuck underneath her chin.

“You are my person,” He whispers and Raven smoothens over a single strand of hair that falls into his line of vision, feeling like she’s going to die from every emotion inside of her. “Don’t make me endure any further.”

“I accept your proposal,” She replies instantly, closing her eyes at the feeling of how his chest sinks like a hundred weights fell off at once and the smile that won’t stop trying to take over her lips.

He reaches to kiss her cheek, and Raven can smell his cologne.

“Now that’s just unfair,” He whispers, nudging her with the bridge of his nose. “Look at me, Raven.”

So Raven looks at him. She looks at Damian Wayne, who’s staring back at her and existing and showing her such a side that she had only seen glimpses of. Little moments that lasted a few seconds, a few minutes, or perhaps a few hours, in which all his walls were entirely demolished for that period of time in front of her. But this doesn’t feel temporary. This feels like a forever thing like she truly is his person, and if there was any doubtful voice still existing in her mind, the pureness in his smile is what makes it to easy to look at him and finally say again—

“I accept your proposal.”

**Author's Note:**

> I need to get more used to posting on here too...


End file.
